We receive many requests for help with server stalls. They come under various names: lockup, freeze, sudden slowdown. When something happens only once or twice a day, it can be difficult to catch it in action. Unfortunately, this often leads to trial-and-error approaches, which can drag on for days (or even months), and cause a [...]
Ultimate MySQL variable and status reference list
January 8, 2011 By 4 Comments
I am constantly referring to the amazing MySQL manual, especially the option and variable reference table. But just as frequently, I want to look up blog posts on variables, or look for content in the Percona documentation or forums. So I present to you what is now my newest Firefox toolbar bookmark: an option and [...]
Percona Server 5.1.49-rel12.0
September 15, 2010 By 6 Comments
Dear Community, Starting with this release, we introduce a new release model for Percona Server. From now on, we will have both Stable and Release Candidate releases. Release Candidates will introduce new features not yet available in Stable releases. Along with new features, our new 5.1.49-12.0 RC contains a couple of patches from the Facebook-MySQL [...]
Estimating Replication Capacity
July 20, 2010 By 4 Comments
It is easy for MySQL replication to become bottleneck when Master server is not seriously loaded and the more cores and hard drives the get the larger the difference becomes, as long as replication remains single thread process. At the same time it is a lot easier to optimize your system when your replication runs [...]
How fast is FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK?
April 24, 2010 By 30 Comments
A week or so ago at the MySQL conference, I visited one of the backup vendors in the Expo Hall. I started to chat with them about their MySQL backup product. One of the representatives told me that their backup product uses FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK, which he admitted takes a global lock on [...]
Looking at Redis
August 27, 2009 By 27 Comments
Recently I had a chance to take a look at Redis project, which is semi-persistent in memory database with idea somethat similar to memcache but richer feature set. Redis has simple single process event driven design, which means it does not have to deal with any locks which is performance killer for a lot of [...]
Slow DROP TABLE
June 16, 2009 By 21 Comments
It is a known fact that ext3 is not the most efficient file system out there and for example file removals can be painfully slow and cause a lot of random I/O. However, as it turns out, it can sometimes have a much more severe impact on the MySQL performance that it would seem. When [...]
10 things you need to know about backup solutions for MySQL
March 3, 2009 By 23 Comments
Are you using someone else’s backup solution for your MySQL data? Do you care a lot about your data? Are you sure you’re getting a reliable, recoverable backup that’ll work for your business and your application, and won’t impact your critical processes while it runs? Here are ten questions you need to be able to [...]
High-Performance Click Analysis with MySQL
December 22, 2008 By 13 Comments
We have a lot of customers who do click analysis, site analytics, search engine marketing, online advertising, user behavior analysis, and many similar types of work. The first thing these have in common is that they’re generally some kind of loggable event. The next characteristic of a lot of these systems (real or planned) is [...]
How Percona does a MySQL Performance Audit
November 24, 2008 By 17 Comments
Our customers or prospective customers often ask us how we do a performance audit (it’s our most popular service). I thought I should write a blog post that will both answer their question, so I can just reply “read all about it at this URL” and share our methodology with readers a little bit. This [...]
